A Persuasive paper about and for the death penalty.

The idea of your life for a life; the vast majority of our population is in favor of the death penalty. For thousands of years it has been used as a punishment for crimes. Through government for crimes against the State to churches for crimes against their religions, "Impositions of the death penalty is extraordinarily rare. Since 1967 there has been one execution for every 1600 murders or 0.06%. There have been approximately 560,000 murders and 358 executions from 1967-1996." (UCR) As we continue the war on crime, two factors stand out: Ending all crime is impossible but controlling it is a must. Regardless of the voices of the Anti-Death Penalty Movement, the only control is deterrence, the only deterrence is control. With all the statistics on deterrence, economic ramifications and secure limitation on allowed appeals. The death penalty should remain the United States primary weapon against capital crime.

Is the death penalty a successful deterrent and does it save the lives of innocent citizens? A question raised and argued for years in the past and still in the spotlight. For justice to be deterring, the severity of the punishment must outweigh the crime. With life in prison without the possibility of parole an inmate has no care if he kills again. This is very evident considering, "at the roughly 52,000 state prison inmates serving time for murder in 1984, an estimated 810 had previously been convicted of murder and had killed 821 persons and following their previous murder convictions. Executing each of these inmates would have saved 821 lives." (41, 1 Stanford Law Review, 11/88, Pd 153)

We can then look at the number of convicted murderers that are either released too soon due to cases being overturned based on past conviction. New laws brought on by judicial decisions in other cases or even escape. It's not the executions that reduce murder rates but the reduction of the number of murders.